by Ethan Cross
He spun the teenager around, using him as a shield and a distraction.
Ackerman ran forward, but it all happened so fast. There was nothing he could do.
Maggie fired. The bullets struck the honey-colored door as Mr. White shoved the teenager forward and slipped through to the other room, pushing the door shut behind him.
The kid fell onto Ackerman, but he shoved the teenager away and rushed through the door. The room beyond was a small storage room. Another door stood in the back left corner of the room. He tried the handle and found it locked.
But it was only a standard door. He braced his back against the rear wall and kicked the doorknob at an angle. It broke free as the housing snapped. Maggie joined him with her pistol at the ready. She nodded at the door, and Ackerman pulled it open as she aimed the gun into the darkness beyond.
There was a stairwell going down. They descended the set of old concrete steps into the bowels of the structure. At the bottom of the steps was another door. This one, however, was made of metal and looked as though it would take an explosion to open it. They tried the handle but found it locked as well.
Ackerman rammed his shoulder into it, trying to test the strength of the frame. People often placed a heavy security door into a frame that was one step above cardboard. That wasn’t the case this time. He didn’t feel it give in the slightest.
He slammed the side of his fist against it and screamed, “Dammit! It would take a tank to get through this thing.”
“Could we pick it?”
“He probably has it braced from the other side. We’d have to drill the hinges to get through, and we definitely don’t have time for that. He wouldn’t have trapped himself in there. He has another way out.”
Maggie said, “Then there must be another way in. Come on.”
He followed her up the stairs and back into the main part of the store. The teenager was still there, lying on the floor and rubbing his ankle. Ackerman supposed the young man must have twisted it and had fallen when he’d shoved him away.
Maggie went to the boy and asked, “Is there another way into the basement?”
The kid seemed in shock from the whole situation, but he stammered, “I don’t know. I’m never supposed to go down there. It’s off limits.”
“Think,” Maggie said. “Is there an outside door? Another way in? Maybe some kind of cellar door in the back?”
The kid said, “I think Mr. White owns the building next door. He uses it as a warehouse. The basement there might be connected with this one. A lot of the old buildings here have these weird tunnels beneath them that connect. But most of the businesses have them sealed off from one another.”
“Call 911 and tell the cops to get here asap. Tell them it’s about the Coercion Killer.”
The teenager’s eyes registered his shock, but he nodded and started to stand.
Maggie ran out the front door at a sprint and halted in front of the neighboring building. It had a large display window that had been blacked out so that passersby couldn’t see in. Ackerman watched as Maggie raised her gun and fired into the glass. The window cracked and shattered, revealing an old storefront now stacked with boxes and junk.
Ackerman was the first to leap through the window. The layout of the building’s interior was similar to its neighbor, probably built at the same time by the same people. Seeing this, he concluded that the door to the basement would be in the same spot.
Racing to the back room, his suspicions were confirmed, and the pair bounded down the stairs.
The door at the bottom was unlocked, and they stepped into the darkness beyond.
84
THOMAS WHITE SHOVED HIS LAPTOP AND HIS BACKUP HARD DRIVES INTO A BACKPACK. Then he looked up at his exquisite masks. He would have to leave them behind. He had, of course, planned for such a contingency as this. He had an escape route, and there was nothing here that he couldn’t live without. Still, now that the moment was upon him, it seemed like such a terrible waste. So much hard work. All that suffering captured so painstakingly and so beautifully, and now he was just abandoning them.
He supposed that was the nature of art. To create and then share with the world what your efforts had reaped. But these were never supposed to be on display. They were for his own enjoyment.
It couldn’t be helped, he told himself. He just hoped that they found a good home somewhere and didn’t just collect dust in an evidence room.
As he left his workshop, he patted the backpack that contained the hard drives and laptop. All his research and videos were contained in digital format on these devices. They were what was most important. With them, he could always recreate his mask collection.
There was only one other item that he would be taking with him during his escape. On his way to retrieve it, he passed the door to Marcus’s cell. Unfortunately, like the masks, he would have to leave Marcus behind.
He regretted not being able to spend more time with his boy, but perhaps they could reconnect later.
He followed the corridor down and around a bend and opened another steel door. Inside was a room containing a bed, a desk, and a multitude of books and toys.
Dylan looked up from a seated position on the floor. He was surrounded by Lego blocks and was constructing a large pirate ship. “Do you like it, Grandpa?” he asked.
Thomas White ignored the boy’s words and said, “Leave your things. We have to go now.”
*
Maggie led the way, and Ackerman followed close behind. She activated the flashlight function of her cell phone to light their path. The light revealed old stone walls that were stained from past water damage. The corridors smelled musty, but Ackerman detected another faint scent. It was the smell of decay, of rotting flesh and blood.
“This way,” he said, following his nose through an archway and into another corridor. This one had rope lighting strung from the ceiling. It gave enough illumination to light the corridor but not to chase away the shadows. Soundproof foam tiles lined the ceiling.
They stayed quiet and moved cautiously
Several rooms lay along the stone corridors. The first was a workshop that contained a wide variety of tools and equipment. Ackerman recognized much of the material as bomb components, but he didn’t voice his observations. The back wall of the workshop was a monument to suffering and featured the elaborate death masks of his father’s victims.
Ackerman followed the smell of decay down to another corridor lined with newly installed metal doors. He opened one and found the body of a young woman in nurse’s scrubs. She had died only recently and had been discarded in a corner like a piece of garbage to be disposed of later.
He listened for sounds of movement and thought that he heard footsteps on the stone floors deeper in the tunnels. He ignored the next door and moved toward the sounds.
Maggie, however, didn’t follow. She removed a metal brace from the door and swung it open. The hinges protested with a groan and a scrape.
Ackerman was about to abandon her to check the other rooms when he heard her cry out for help. He whirled back and rushed to her.
Inside the room, he saw the crumpled form of a man in a growing pool of blood. He saw the blood seeping from wounds in the man’s wrists. Maggie was cradling the body and rocking back and forth, wailing.
Ackerman couldn’t see the man’s face, and it took him a moment to make the connection. When he did, his heart sank. This pale, emaciated body had been his brother, Marcus.
“Go get help! Call an ambulance!” Maggie screamed.
Ackerman backed into the corridor and looked in one direction, then the other. He could still hear movement in the distance. If he hurried, he could probably catch his father. He could stop him before he escaped and hurt anyone else. He could rectify his earlier failure and put an end to the man who had caused so much pain. So much suffering. So much fear.
Marcus was probably dead already.
But he couldn’t say that for sure. There was always hope.
He closed his eyes and made his decision.
He tore off two strips of his shirt and tossed them to Maggie. “Bind his wrists and stop the bleeding,” he said. “I’ll bring help.”
85
HE DREAMED OF DROWNING IN BLOOD AND AWOKE TO THE SOUNDS OF LOW VOICES, THE BEEPING OF MACHINES, AND THE HUM OF FLUORESCENT LIGHTING. Marcus tried to open his eyes, but his vision was blurry and painful. It felt like he had sand in his eyes. Slowly adjusting, he took in his surroundings. A hospital room. Light blue walls. A TV facing him high on the wall. His throat was dry. The metallic smell and taste of blood still clung to him. Maggie held his hand to his right. Another man sat within the recess beside the window in the corner. He had a beard, glasses, and puffier cheeks—enough subtle changes to stand up to casual inspection—but Marcus still recognized his brother.
He smiled at Maggie and said, “I wish this was real.”
She choked out, “It is real, baby. You’re safe now. We got there just in time.”
His voice didn’t sound like his own, but he said, “It can’t be. I was in hell. There’s no coming back from there.”
Maggie squeezed his hand, held it up to her cheek, and sobbed.
It took several more minutes for Marcus’s faculties to return. When they did, his first thought was of his father. He pushed himself up in bed and said, “Ackerman Sr.? Did you get him?”
Ackerman hopped down from the window well and said, “No, he escaped through the tunnels.”
“What about Dylan?”
“He must have taken him along. We only found you, a couple of dead bodies, and another victim still alive. She seems damn near catatonic. Maybe it’s just shock.”
Marcus tried to sit up farther but got dizzy and had to steady himself on the rail of the hospital bed. “Take it easy,” Maggie said. “You’re malnourished, dehydrated, and you’ve lost a lot of blood. But the doctors say that you’ll be fine. You might need some physical therapy and things like that, but there’s no reason you can’t be back to your normal self in a couple of months.”
He knew better. He knew that he would never be the same, but he said, “I don’t have months. My father’s planning his grand finale for... How long have I been out?”
“Since yesterday when we found you.”
He looked at a clock on the wall. It read five thirty-seven. “Dammit. We have less than a day to find his next target. He’s the one that bombed the courthouse here in KC. And he said that was just a test. He said something about explosives and that his grand finale against the city would be tomorrow.”
Maggie said, “They found traces of PLX in his workshop. It’s a liquid binary explosive invented during World War Two, originally designed to be sprayed over minefields and then detonated. Pretty nasty stuff. They’re trying to trace back how he got his hands on it.”
Ackerman added, “Father’s a resourceful man.”
“But that’s not your problem anymore, Marcus,” Maggie said firmly. “You need to focus on getting better. The police and FBI are tracking down Ackerman Sr.”
Maggie briefly explained what the investigation had turned up so far about the man calling himself Thomas White. Then she filled him in on the last several days and how she and Andrew had rescued Ackerman from execution at the hands of Craig and his men. She described finding his grandfather, Louis Ackerman, and how that had led them to Leavenworth. She explained that, once they had located him, she had phoned the Director and learned that Andrew had been tortured but should recover.
“Give me your phone,” Marcus said once she was finished.
“Why?”
“Because the police and FBI don’t have our”—he gestured between himself and his brother—”first-hand knowledge of our father, and they also don’t have Stan.”
He grabbed the phone from Maggie and swiped through her contacts for Stan’s number. Then he initiated a call and put it on speaker. Stan answered and expressed his relief at Marcus being alive. Once the pleasantries had been exchanged, Marcus said, “I need you to get me some information, Stan.”
“It’s what I do, boss. Just say the word.”
“Now that we know Ackerman Sr. has been living as Thomas White I need you to find some correlation between a woman close to him, the Kansas City police department, and the judge or courtroom that was bombed. There has to be a connection somewhere. Dig deep. Not just news stories or police reports, but rumors and hearsay. Get me something. Maybe that will lead us to what his target could be.”
“I’m on it. I’ll call you back.”
Stan hung up, and Marcus’s mind continued to work at a thousand miles a minute. He had been a helpless victim for so long, unable to do anything to save himself or anyone else. But that had changed now. He felt free and alive. He was the hunter again.
He glanced over at Maggie, and the worry was written all over her face. She said, “Ackerman, could you step outside, please?”
“As you wish, little sister.”
Once his brother had left the room, Marcus said, “You and Frank seem to be getting along.”
“It’s a long story, and I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about you. You need to settle down. You’re in no condition—”
“I’m fine.”
“You almost died.”
“I did die. A big part of me died down in that hole. Now I’m trying to revive a little of it. I was alone and helpless for so long. I need to do something.”
“I know. It’s just... I’ve been thinking a lot after you... And I want you to know that last year when you asked me to leave the Shepherd Organization behind and run away with you... To be normal. Start a new life. Well, saying no was the worst decision of my life. I was just scared. This life is all I’ve ever known. I don’t know how to be normal. I don’t think I’d be any good at it.”
Marcus squeezed her hand. “This isn’t just what we do. It’s who we are. And I realize that now. I’ve spent so much time running from myself. Worrying about the kind of man I am and what I’m capable of. But I don’t care about all that anymore. I’m tired of running. I just want to follow my heart and do the best I can with what I’ve been given. I think that’s all anyone can do.”
Maggie leaned up, kissed him, and laid her head on his chest. They didn’t say anything else, just held each other, until her phone started to ring. She answered and put Stan on speaker. Ackerman must have heard the phone ring because he stepped back in from the hall so that he could hear.
“You were right about there being a connection,” Stan said. “The woman who’s on the deed for that music store is dead. She was allegedly killed by an intruder in her home, and a couple of KCPD officers found her body. That’s the official line, anyway. I guess the facts in the case didn’t add up. One of the officers involved was rumored to have been a drug addict, and he overdosed like a week later. Some said he was acting really unstable and depressed after finding the woman’s body. A gun found nearby that was supposed to be the murder weapon didn’t match up under ballistic scrutiny. There were a bunch of other things that made the whole thing suspect. Still, nothing was done. No evidence.”
“If it never went to trial, then how does it line up with the bombing at the courthouse?”
“I didn’t say it didn’t go to trial. The woman’s daughter filed a wrongful-death suit against the city, alleging that the officers were responsible for her mother’s death. The judge killed in the bombing heard the case and ruled in favor of the city.”
Maggie said, “So Thomas White’s girlfriend was killed by the KCPD, and now he’s out for revenge.”
Marcus shook his head. “No, he said it wasn’t vengeance. He called all this a tribute to her. A gift. He said she was his soulmate. Stan, is there anything suspicious in that woman’s past? Anything that might indicate she’s—”
&n
bsp; “I’m way ahead of you, boss. At least two people close to her have died under suspicious circumstances. Her father when she was a teenager and then her husband. She was the prime suspect in both cases, but there wasn’t enough evidence to move forward.”
Maggie shook her head and laughed a humorless laugh. “So a couple of officers probably accidentally killed her and thought they’d taken out some nice older lady.”
Marcus finished her thought. “When, in reality, they killed a serial murderer. I bet she and my father shared more than just a bed.”
“Partners in crime. A regular Bonnie and Clyde story,” Ackerman said.
Marcus considered the implications and tried to think what this could mean for the final target. He glanced up toward the TV mounted on the wall and caught sight of the name Thomas White. “Turn that up.”
Maggie adjusted the set’s volume, and Marcus watched a bit of the story. Then an image flashed on the screen of a woman who seemed strangely familiar. She was a beautiful black woman with high cheekbones and short, utilitarian hair. A vacant stare filled her eyes as police led her to a waiting ambulance.
“Who is that?” Marcus asked.
Maggie replied, “That’s the woman who was being held captive along with you. They found her in the tunnel that your father used to escape. Apparently he had tried to take her with him, and she either fought back or was moving too slow because he sliced her and left her there. Did you ever see her?”
Marcus didn’t answer. His synapses were firing, and an idea or memory danced along the edge of his consciousness, just out of reach. He knew that woman from somewhere. He closed his eyes and accessed his mental databanks. Using his eidetic memory, he recalled case files, video footage, crime scenes, missing-persons reports... He remembered the smiling faces in all those files he had reviewed at the start of the case. That woman had been one of the missing. Alanna Lewis.
But why did that matter? There was something else. Some other memory. Another place where he had seen her face.